


The Half-Seen World of Shadows

by cookinguptales



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, introspective, trick - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-22 10:19:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2504273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For as long as there's been fear, there's been Bill Cipher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Half-Seen World of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Andian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/gifts).



> Andian, I do hope you enjoy this! You asked for something mysterious and creepy with Bill Cipher, and I was initially stumped because we know so little about him. But then I thought about how powerful the unknown really is...
> 
> EDIT: And now that I've seen the newest episode of Gravity Falls (Society of the Blind Eye), just gotta say that this was written before I saw that but it gives me all kinds of ideas.

 

 

 

_"Three people can keep a secret if two of them are dead."_

_Ben Franklin_

 

 

Way back in the deepest recesses of Bill's mind, wedged behind the simmering chaos and half-formed plots, there was a real sense of age. It scratched at the back of his brain, reminding him that all of this had come before, and all would come again. And he felt deep in what passed for his bones nowadays that this was not his first form, nor would it be his last. He'd been the monster meticulously painted on cave walls, and he'd lurked in and between the darkness of the forest. He'd trumpeted victory from blood-soaked battlefields, and he'd buzzed with plague and radioactivity. He was the Other. He was the Unknown. He was Fear. And Fear never dies. It only changes its shape, mercurial, shifting as to melt into the shadows tucked away in the corners of the minds of humans.

In his experience, nothing nagged at the mind and chilled the soul like the unknown. He'd been a bit worried there when the information age dawned bright and indomitable, but he needn't have been. Fear endures. When shadows shrink under the illuminating light of knowledge, they do not disappear--only retreat. Paranoia was the name of the game, and if shadows couldn't be seen, they were still believed in. And if shadows couldn't be created through ignorance, they could certainly be made through malice. All it took was a well-placed whisper here, a sighting there, and people believed that the true darkness in the world was being deliberately hidden from them, that there was unfathomable darkness stretching out into the limitless void just beyond their fingertips.

And it wasn't as if that was a lie.

These new stories, these delicious conspiracy theories and urban legends, were deep fears, lingering ones. The kind that could be explained away easily but kept sprouting up as quickly as they were put down, rippling along internet connections and whispered across hedges. They were secret fears, and the fear of secrets. That suited Bill fine. Just fine. He _loved_ secrets. That was why he liked Gravity Falls so much. That sleepy little town was crawling with secrets. Drowning in them. He loved to peel them away from hardened hearts like scabs from a wound. He warmed himself in the frantic, fluttering glow of fear that lay beneath. He collected the little lies and the furtive glances, the sins and the mysteries.

And he grew.

The thing about secrets, though, was that they had to _stay secret._ Secrets could only exist within cracks--cracks in minds, in families, in souls. If the cracks were widened too far, those secrets would scatter like bugs under a rock. And lately, a lot of rocks were getting lifted in Gravity Falls.

For now, though, the peculiar brand of suspension of belief unique to humans was still on Bill's side. So far no one was about to believe the word of some half pint and his sister, even if that half pint happened to be a Pines. The act of revelation was too uncomfortable, too raw. Let sleeping dogs lie. Let festering secrets roil. People didn't want to open their eyes for fear that what they'd see was even worse than they could possibly imagine. They didn't seem to understand that seeing was the first step towards solving, and Bill was thankful for it.

But that could only hold out for so long, and in the meantime, Bill had a family of nosy troublemakers to deal with. His precious secrets were being pulled up by the roots, exposed to the punishing glare of the sun, and he wasn't about to take that lying down. No, soon enough the Pines family would know more about Gravity Falls' secrets than they had ever hoped. Soon they would find out more than they ever should. And when that day came, Bill Cipher would place them into his collection. Just one more disquieting secret to trouble minds during a quiet night.

**Author's Note:**

> ZMU VCX KIGJ EED


End file.
